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Logan: 'We made a mistake'

In conversations with POLITICO, sources familiar with “60 Minutes” reporting said that it was only on Thursday night that “60 Minutes” obtained the official account of events that Davies had given to FBI officials after the 2012 raid — an account that contradicts the version of events he gave in a new book and in his interview with “60 Minutes” correspondent Lara Logan last month. Those contradictory accounts were the subject of New York Times report published late Thursday night.

The evolution of CBS’s knowledge of the FBI report can be seen in the changing nature of their response to the controversy: On Wednesday, Lara Logan, the correspondent who interviewed Davies, defended the report. On Thursday night, “60 Minutes” announced that it had “learned of new information that undercuts the account told to us by Morgan Jones” (Davies’ pseudonym). On Friday, both Logan and Fager issued full-throated apologies.

That “60 Minutes” could have conducted a year’s worth of reporting without adequately vetting Davies or obtaining the FBI’s report was the subject of much hand-wringing over at CBS News on Friday, according to sources that spoke with POLITICO. For some, it was also proof of a greater truth: that “60 Minutes” greatest asset — its longstanding reputation as one of the most reliable brands in television journalism — can also be its greatest liability.

“60 Minutes” exists in a silo at CBS News, often by choice, these sources said. Throughout their reporting, Lara Logan and the “60 Minutes” team did not seek assistance from their colleagues in CBS News’s investigative unit, many of whom are well-sourced with the FBI and would likely have been able to assist in the vetting process.

“The question folks are asking is: Did anybody at ‘60 Minutes’ reach out to anybody outside of ‘60 Minutes’ to vet this guy. The answer is ‘no,’” one source with knowledge of the events said.

“Between John Miller, Chris Isham and Len Tepper you have three journalists who have about as good as sources as you could have at the FBI,” one source said, referring to members of the CBS News investigative team. “Why weren’t they asked, ‘What does that FBI report say?’”

Over the last year, “60 Minutes” has also become freer from CBS News’s editorial oversight. Until the beginning of 2013, the show’s high-profile news packages were overseen by a senior network vice president responsible for standards. Since the departure of Linda Mason in January, that position has become effectively non-existent. Al Ortiz, who replaced Mason, was not given the same editorial control. He was not consulted for the program’s package on Benghazi, sources said.

Kevin Tedesco, the spokesperson for “60 Minutes,” declined POLITICO’s request for an interview regarding the error and both Tedesco and Sonya McNair, the senior vice president for communications at CBS News, declined to say when the network learned about the FBI account.

Instead, Tedesco forwarded a press release from Friday morning announcing Logan’s apology, which took place on “CBS This Morning.” In that apology, Logan said, “We take the vetting of sources and stories very seriously at ‘60 Minutes’ and we took it seriously in this case. But we were misled and we were wrong, and that’s the important thing.” She added: “We have to set the record straight and take responsibility.”

Logan is also scheduled to deliver another brief apology on the Friday edition of the CBS Evening News, during which the network will tease a longer apology that is set to air on Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes,” POLITICO has learned.

Fager, the “60 Minutes” EP and CBS News chairman, also apologized in an interview with Variety on Friday afternoon.

“We like to think we are perfect as much as we can be. In this case, we were not,” he said. “The most important thing now is that we own it: We made a mistake. We are sorry.”